


is there some idea to replace my life?

by likewinning



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Comment Fic, Community: comment_fic, Gen, general spoilers if you don't know what happens in the comics?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 12:24:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1898919
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likewinning/pseuds/likewinning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for comment_fic, for the prompt "legacy." <em>It was never so they could be some story in the history books.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	is there some idea to replace my life?

**Author's Note:**

> title from Sufjan Stevens.

Neither of them took on the costume, the shield, any of it for the glory. It was never so they could be some story in the history books.

History never gets it totally right, anyway.

What history forgets, when it writes about Captain America, is that before he was a legend, a thing for kids to dress up as for Halloween, a story teenagers swear up and down they saw saving someone, swear up and down saved _them_ \- what they forget is that once, he was just a dumb kid from Brooklyn who wouldn't back down from a fight.

Bucky (James Buchanan Barnes, as the history books call him) never forgets that. He takes on the shield, the costume, the whole mess of fame and infamy blended together (because they still talk about it, he knows, who _he_ was for half a century, rarely who he was before) - he takes it all on not because it's the right thing to do, or even because he _wants_ to - but because he knows it would've made that dumb kid from Brooklyn laugh at him, to see him like this.

Once, three lifetimes ago, Bucky figured he and Steve would grow up, that he'd come back from the war and they'd both settle down, that they'd marry nice girls from their neighborhood (or, considering their neighborhood, maybe not all that nice) and have a couple kids. They'd see each other all the time, for years, until their own families grew bigger, until -

Well, Bucky always figured he'd have a much earlier expiration date than this. He figured, someday, he'd just be a picture in a photo album, and one of Steve's grandkids would point to him and ask who he was, and Steve would smile and say, "Oh, _that_ jerk."

He knows that will never happen now. He knows all he has left of Steve's legacy is a shield, a costume, a name. It's not enough. Nothing could be. But he keeps going, for that kid he used to know. He has to.


End file.
